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UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN. 

PHILOSOPHICAL  PAPERS, 

FIRST  SERIES,  No,  2. 

GOETHE  AND  THE  (DONDUGT  OF  LIFE. 

BY  CALVIN  THOMAS,  A.  M., 

ASSISTANT  PROFESSOR  OF  GERMAN  AND  SANSKKIT. 
Entered  at  the  Poet-Office  at  Ann  Arbor,  Mich. .  as  Second-class  matter. 


OF  THE 


ANN  ARBOR: 
ANDREWS  &  WITHERBY, 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

4  Edel  sei  der  Mensch,  hilfreichund  gut.' 


It  is  now  some  thirty  years  since  Thomas  De  Quincey 
expressed  the  opinion  that  Goethe  had  been  much  over- 
rated and  that  during  the  next  generation  or  two  his  repu- 
tation would  decline.*  Verily,  as  M.  Renan  lately  observed, 
the  vocation  of  prophet  has  become  in  our  time  peculiarly 
difficult.  Since  De  Quincey  printed  his  splenetic  essay 
the  prestige  of  Goethe  has  steadily  increased  until  he  has 
become,  it  is  safe  to  say,  the  most  imposing  and  authorita- 
tive personage  in  the  history  of  modern  literature.  Her- 
mann Grimm  calls  him  simply  '  the  greatest  poet  of  all 
times  and  of  all  peoples.'  Matthew  Arnold,  while  gently 
deriding  Grimm's  statement  of  the  matter  as  over-patrio- 
tic, is  himself -on  record  to  the  effect  that  he,  Goethe,  'in 
the  depth  and  richness  of  his  criticism  of  life,  is  by  far  our 
greatest  modern  man.'f  Edmond  Scherer,  a  Frenchman 
who  is  certainly  not  chargeable  with  any  prepossessions  in 
favor  of  things  trans-Rhenane,  finds  that  Goethe, '  although 
he  has  not  Shakespeare's  power,  is  a  genius  more 
vast,  more  universal,  than  Shakespeare.'  Finally,  Oscar 
Browning,  writing  for  the  new  Encyclopaedia  JBri- 
tannica,  uses  this  language:  'Posterity  must  decide 
his  exact  precedence  in  that  small  and  chosen  com- 

*  Enc.  Brit.  8th  ed.  article  Goethe. 

t  A  French  Critic  on  Goethe  in  the  volume  Mixed  Essays.  In  this  essaj 
the  above-quoted  opinion  of  Grimm  as  well  as  that  of  Scherer  are  consid- 
ered at  some  length. 


1 59849 


2  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

pany  which  contains  the  names  of  Homer,  Dante, 
and  Shakespeare.  ...  As  Homer  concentrated  in 
himself  the  spirit  of  antiquity,  Dante  of  the  Middle  Ages 
and  Shakespeare  of  the  Renaissance,  so  Goethe  is  the 
representative  of  the  modern  spirit,  the  prophet  of  man- 
kind under  new  circumstances  and  new  conditions,  the 
appointed  teacher  of  ages  yet  unborn.' 

But  Mr.  Browning  has  another  remark  which  is  even 
more  significant  than  that  quoted,  since  it  leaves  nothing 
to  posterity,  but  calmly  announces  as  settled  a  question 
about  which  there  has  been  vastly  more  disagreement  than 
about  Goethe's  eminence  as  a  poet.  The  remark  is  this : 
4  He  needs  no  defence,  nothing  but  sympathetic  study.' 

A  few  years  ago  those  who  interested  themselves  in 
Goethe  made  it  their  primary  business  for  the  most  part 
either  to  assail  or  to  defend  him.  The  charges  of  the  as- 
sailants are  sufficiently  familiar.  It  was  said  that  he  was 
cold,  statuesque,  unpatriotic,  indifferent  to  all  except 
aesthetic  issues;  that  in  his  relations  to  women  he  was 
heartless  and  insincere ;  that  as  a  poet  he  was  immoral, 
and  as  a  man  self-centered  and  vain.  To  these  charges, 
then,  various  answers  were  forthcoming.  And  so  the  bat- 
tle went  on  ;  Goethe  being  treated  much  as  if  he  had  been 
some  hero  of  romance  sent  into  the  world  ready-made  to 
serve  as  a  pattern  for  all  mankind,  instead  of  being  as  he 
was,  a  man,  with  a  history,  and  with  a  man's  indefeasible 
right  to  blunder  and  be  held  only  the  more  dear  for  his 
blunders,  provided  they  be  honestly  made  in  the  pursuit 
of  large  and  worthy  ideals.  * 

It  would  hardly  be  correct  to  speak  of  this  battle  as 
ended ;  it  still  goes  on  here  and  there.  The  real  students 
of  Goethe,  however,  have  well  nigh  lost  interest  in  it.  For 

*<  Die  IrrthOmer  ries  Menschen  machen  ihn  eigeutlich  liebenswttrdig.' 
"-Goethe's  Werke,  XIX,  59.  (Heinpel  edition). 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  3 

it  has  become  clear  that  the  old  theory  of  heartlessness, 
selfishness,  moral  pococurantism  and  what  not,  was  ut- 
terly unsound  and  rested  upon  an  elaborate  misconcep- 
tion.* The  sources  of  the  misconception  are  in  good 
part  known.  It  sprang  very  largely  from  an  unskillful 
reading  of  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit.  In  part  also  it  came 
from  the  bitter  attacks  of  '  Young  Germany '  and  other 
writers  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  decades  of  the  present  cen- 
tury. These  men,  blind  for  the  time  being  to  the  import- 
ance of  everything  save  the  political  agitation  in  which 
they  were  themselves  engaged,  were  naturally  made 
angry  because  they  could  not  quote  Goethe  in  the  interest 
of  their  own  or  any  other  sound  and  fury.  But  the  pas- 
sions and  the  issues  of  that  time  have  disappeared ;  its 
patriotic  dream  is  realized,  and  lo,  it  is  now  seen  on  every 
hand  that  one  of  the  most  valuable  possessions  of  the 
united  fatherland  is  the  life  of  Goethe  just  as  it  was. 
Surely  one  who  knows  at  all  what  that  life  signifies  to  the 
New  Germany  will  be  slow  to  join  in  regrets  that  it  could 
not  have  been  this,  that  or  the  other  thing  which  it  was 
not.  A  pamphleteer,  an  anchorite  or  an  angel  could  not 
have  become  the  commanding  teacher  that  Goethe  is.  In 
other  words  it  can  be  seen  in  the  light  of*  the  present  bet- 
ter than  it  could  be  seen  a  few  years  ago  that  the  great 
German  poet  lived  consciously  to  a^  high  destiny.  Fur- 
thermore ;  after  all  the  microscopic  study  that  has  of  late 
been  bestowed  upon  him,  his  life  stands  out  so  high  in  its 
purpose,  so  earnest  in  its  endeavor,  and  so  large  in  its  re- 
sults, that  there  is,  as  there  ought  to  be,  a  growing  disposi- 
tion to  take  him  on  what  he  himself  regarded  as  the  main 

* '  Man  uannte  Goethe  wiederholt  den  raarmornen  Gott,  und  da  er  es  so 
oft  h6rte,  glaubte  er  es  selbst;  er  1st  iiie  marmorn  gewesen  weder  vor  noch 
naeh  der  Helena;  er  war  ein  gules  ireues,  deutsches  Herz,  fahig  sich  zu 
freuen,  zu  leiden  und  zu  weinen,  bis  an  sein  Lebensende.'— Julian  Schmidt, 
Preussische  JahrbUcher  39,388. 


4  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

issue.*  Any  one  who  is  willing  to  do  this  will  find  that 
he  has  on  hand  employment  enough  of  a  kind  at  once 
more  agreeable  and  more  profitable  than  either  continu- 
ing or  replying  to  the  old  fusilade  of  censure. 

The  task  which  I  have  proposed  to  myself  in  the  fol- 
lowing pages  is  to  sketch  the  outlines  of  Goethe's  ethical 
creed.  If  he  be  really  the  greatest  of  all  critics  of  life, 
then  a  correct  and  reasonably  concise  account  of  the  ele- 
ments of  his  criticism  ought  surely  to  possess  a  certain 
value.  But  is  any  such  account  in  reality  possible? 
Goethe  himself  was  no  system-maker  and  that  which  is  best 
and  most  valuable  in  him  comes  to  us  largely  in  the  form  of 
incidental  commentary.  Is  there  not  danger,  in  case  of  a 
man  possessing  Goethe's  prodigious  intellectual  range, 
that  any  attempt  to  schematize  will  result  in  simply  vul- 
garizing ?  There  certainly  is  danger  of  this  kind  and  I  am 
keenly  alive  to  it.  At  the  same  time  I  think  it  undenia- 
ble that  this  scattered  wisdom  is  in  general  but  the  rich 
fringe  which  may  sometimes  conceal,  but  is  nevertheless 
attached  to,  a  coherent  thread  of  ethical  doctrine.  The 
laying  bare  of  this  thread  may  not  be  an  easy,  but  it  ought 
not  to  be  a  hopeless  task.  At  any  rate  that  is  what  is  here 
undertaken.  That  which  I  am  about  to  offer  is  neither 
attack  nor  panegyric,  but  a  study.  It  will  spring  in- 
deed from  a  strong  admiration  of  the  character  of  Goethe, 
but  then,  surely,  none  but  an  injudicious  friend  of  the 
great  poet  would  wish  to  charge  him  with  perfection. 
Probably  he  got  his  fair  share  in  Adam's  great  legacy  of 
capacity  for  going  wrong,  but  his  shortcomings  may  be 
left,  at  least  for  the  purposes  of  the  present  inquiry,  where 
he  himself  left  them  in  the  good-natured  epigram : 


*  '  Das  Hauptfundament  des  Sittlichen  1st  der  gute  Wille.'r- Goethe's 
Werke,  XIX,  77. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  5 

What  you  say  is  nothing  new  ; 
Fallible  I  was  and  who  can  doubt  it? 
What  you  stupid  devils  say  about  it, 
I  know  it  better  than  you.* 

I.    SPINOZA. 

The  three  chief  subjects  of  Goethe's  thinking  were 
Nature,  Art  and  Conduct.  Now  these  are  the  three  high- 
est and  largest  interests  of  humanity  and  hence  it  was  a 
very  significant  saying  of  his  that  the  three  men  to  whom 
he  owed  the  most  were  Linnaeus,  Shakespeare  and 
Spinoza,  f  It  was  Linnaeus  who  first  brought  home  to  him 
a  sense  of  nature's  wealth  and  of  the  fascination  which 
comes  from  puzzling  at  her  riddles.  It  was  Shakespeare 
from  whom  he  first  learned  the  meaning  and  the  possibil 
ities  of  art.  It  was  Spinoza  who  kindled  in  him  a  new 
fervor  for  right  living  and  gave  him  the  ground-work  of 
an  ethical  philosophy.  Goethe  was  born  in  1749  and  his 
first  introduction  to  the  Ethics  of  Spinoza  occurred  appar- 
ently between  1770  and  1774.  What  was  it  that  the  young 
German  poet  drew  from  the  lens-grinder  of  Amsterdam  ? 
Half  a  century  later  the  same  poet,  no  longer  young,  tried 
to  answer  this  question  and  these  are  his  words  from 
Dichtung  und  Wahrheit: 

^When  I  had  sought  the  world  over  after  a  means  of 
education  for  my  singular  character  I  happened  upon  the 
Ethics  of  this  man.  What  I  may  have  read  out  of  the 
book  and  what  I  may  have  read  into  it,  I  could  hardly  tell. 
Suffice  it  to  say,  I  found  here  that  which  quieted  my  pas- 

*'Gar  nichtsNeuessagt  Ihr  mir! 
Unvollkommen  war  ich  ohne  Zweifel, 
Was  Ihr  an  mlr  tadelt,  dumrae  Teufel, 
Ich  weiss  es  besser  als  Ihr.'—  Werke,  II,  378. 

fCf.  Viehoff,  Goethe'*  Gedichte,  II,  89. 


6  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

sions  and  seemed  to  offer  me  a  large  and  free  outlook  over 
the  physical  and  moral  world.  But  that  which  especially 
drew  me  to  him  was  the  boundless  unselfishness  that 
shone  from  every  sentence.  That  marvellous  saying, 
4  Whoso  truly  loves  God  must  not  demand  that  God  love 
him  in  return,'*  with  all  the  propositions  that  support  it 
and  the  consequences  that  flow  from  it,  filled  my  mind 
completely.  To  be  unselfish  in  everything,  and  most  so 
in  love  and  friendship,  was  my  delight,  my  maxim,  my 
exercise ;  so  that  that  later  wild  saying,  c  If  I  love  thee 
what  is  that  to  thee  ? '  f  came  from  my  very  heart.  For 
the  rest  let  me  not  fail  to  recognize  here  also  the  truth 
that  the  most  intimate  unions  spring  from  contrasts. 
Spinoza's  perfect  equanimity  contrasted  with  my  turbu- 
lent striving;  his  mathematical  method  was  the  opposite 
of  my  poetic  way  of  thinking  and  of  putting  things ;  and 
precisely  that  artificial  treatment  which  some  thought  ill- 
adapted  to  ethical  subjects  made  me  his  earnest  disciple 
and  excited  my  most  ardent  admiration.']; 

Not  much  importance  can  be  attached  to  this  sugges- 
tion about  the  attraction  of  opposites.  There  is  good  evi- 
dence that  Goethe  was  repelled  from  other  men  by  the 
very  qualities  which  he  thinks  were  a  part  of  Spinoza's  at- 
tractiveness. In  Faust  he  pours  ridicule  upon  the  whole 
business  of  logic-chopping  and  scattered  sayings  indicate 
clearly  enough  his  distrust  of  formal  proof  as  a  means  of 
arriving  at  the  highest  knowledge.  The  real  source  of 
Spinoza's  power  lay  not  in  his  form  but  in  his  matter ;  in 
the  large  sweep  of  his  thought  and  the  vastness  of  his  out- 
look. It  is  true  that  he  can  no  longer  affect  a  reader  of 
to-day  as  he  did  certain  minds  a  hundred  years  ago ;  for 

*  Spinoza's  Ethics,  Part  V,  prop  19. 
t  Werke.  XVII,  228. 
J  Werke,  XXII,  168. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  7 

the  most  of  what  he  had  to  say  has  since  that  time  been 
better  said  in  the  language  of  poetry  and  science.  But 
even  now  one  who  will  not  allow  himself  to  be  repelled  by 
the  hard  and  forbidding  shell  of  Spinoza's  mechanical 
method  will  feel  often  enough  that  the  man  was  far  too 
great  for  his  dialect.  The  geometrical  jargon  in  which  he 
deemed  it  best  to  cast  his  thought  gives  an  impression  of 
clipped  wings  and  manacled  limbs ;  but  underneath  the 
jargon  is  the  soul  of  a  Hebrew  poet  and  it  was  this  poet 
who  appealed  so  powerfully  to  Goethe. 

But  Goethe  even  in  his  youth  was  not  the  man 
to  put  himself  completely  into  the  hands  of  a  master 
and  it  is  best  to  avoid  any  such  phrase  as  that  he  '  accepted  ' 
Spinoza's  philosophy.  That  philosophy,  considered  as  a 
theory  of  the  universe,  is  built  upon  two  ideas :  the  idea 
that  what  we  call  Nature  is  an  aspect  of  God,  and  the  idea 
that  this  God  works  by  necessity  through  changeless  and 
eternal  laws.  Now  it  is  true  that  both  these  thoughts  found 
congenial  soil  in  the  mind  of  young  Goethe.  Even  as  a 
boy  he  took  delight  in  a  sense  of  personal  closeness  to  the 
Infinite  and  he  was  repelled  by  the  current  conception  of 
God,  both  orthodox  and  deistic,  as  a  Ruler  in  the  nebulous 
distance.  *  A  little  later  the  nature -worship  of  the  day 
took  possession  of  him  and  the  open  fields  could  lift  him 
into  a  religious  ecstacy.  He  tells  us  too  of  his  early  diffi- 
culties over  '  dispensations '  like  the  great  Lisbon  earth- 
quake and  the  accident  to  his  father's  house.  This  being 
the  temper  of  his  mind  it  is  not  strange  that  he  was  ready 
to  listen  to  a  man  who  told  him  that  the  God  whom  he  de- 
sired to  approach  and  the  nature  he  loved  were  one,  that 
outside  of  this  One  nothing  whatever  was  conceivable, 
and  that  of  this  One  changeless  eternal-  law  was  the  very 

*  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit,  Erstes  Buch,p<wim.—  Werke,  XX,  25  ff. 


8  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

essence.  That  these  convictions  soon  became  a  part  of  his 
mental  life  and  in  some  degree  the  basis  of  his  scientific 
thinking,  is  abundantly  attested  in  his  writings.*  But  that 
he  ever  took  any  great  interest  in  Spinoza's  '  proofs '  as 
such  there  is  little  reason  to  suppose.  Late  in  his  life  we 
find  him  saying,  and  the  words  mark  the  lifelong  bent  of 
his  mind :  '  I  do  not  venture  to  theorize  concerning  the  Ab- 
aolute.'t  Spinoza's  work,  however,  is  largely  made  up  of 
such  theorizing.  The  truth  is  that  whalf  Goethe  drew  from 
Spinoza,  was,  as  he  himself  intimates,  not  so  much  a  cer- 
tain set  of  clear  intellectual  convictions  concerning  the 
constitution  of  the  world,  as  rather  a  fund  of  emotion,  an 
ethical  exaltation  which  presently  crystallized  into  a  few 
great  regulative  principles  of  conduct.  Can  anything  be 
done  in  sober  prose  to  throw  light  upon  the  character  of 
this  emotion?  Not  much  perhaps  and  yet  the  attempt  is 
worth  making. 

Let  us  assume  that  Spinoza's  focal  doctrines  are  true. 
Let  us  put  aside  the  thought  of  an  extramundane  Ruler 


-*  For  example :    '  Was  war'  ein  Gott,  der  nur  von  aussen  stiesse, 
Ira  Kreis  das  All  am  Finger  laufen  liesse ! 
Him  ziemt's  die  Welt  im  Innern  zu  bewegen, 
Natur  in  Sich,  Sich  in  Natur  zu  hegen, 
So  dags,  was  in  Him  leht,  und  webt  uud  ist, 
Nie  Seine  Kraft,  nle  Semen  Geist  vermisst.' 

-WerkeU.223. 

1  Natur  hat  weder  Kern  noch  Schale. 
i  Alles  1st  sie  mit  einem  Male.'—  Werke  II,  237. 

Nach  ewigen,  ehrnen, 

Grossen  Gesetz  n, 

Mils  sen  wir  alle 

Unseres  DaseinH 

Kreise  vollendt  n.—  Werke,  1, 167. 

t  'Vom  Absoluten  im  theoretischen  Sinne  wag'  ich  nic^t  zu  reden ; 
behaupten  ober  darf  ich:  dass,  wer  es  in  der  Erscheinung  anerkannt  und 
imrner  im  Auge  behalten  hat,  sehr  grossen  Gewinn  davon  erfahren  wird.'  — 
Werke.  XIX,  77. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OP  LIFE.  9 

and  abolish  the  word  supernatural  from  our  vocabulary. 
Let  us  actually  believe  that  the  universe  is  a  manifestation 
of  necessary  and  eternal  law.  This  last  is  nothing  more 
than  the  assumption  upon  which  all  science  rests.  And 
yet  it  commonly  requires  effort  to  realize  the  full  scope  of 
the  thought.  Fichte  illustrates  it  by  showing  that  if  a  grain 
of  sand  on  the  beach  were  to  lie  a  few  inches  from  where 
it  does  lie,  the  whole  precedent  history  of  the  world  must 
have  been  different.  Under  this  hypothesis  Nature  becomes 
in  literal  truth 

'  A  subtle  chain  of  countless  rings.' 

And  each  particular  fact,  say,  a  moth,  or  a  man,  or  a  planet, 
is  a  link  in  the  chain.  And  what  must  be  the  effect  of 
such  a  thought  upon  a  man's  ethical  instinct  ?  It  is  very 
commonly  argued  that  Spinoza's  hypothesis  must  inevit- 
ably act  as  a  moral  poison.  It  leads,  as  we  are  told,  to 
quietism  and  listlessness ;  for  what  ground  of  effort  is  there, 
if  what  one  is  and  does  is  determined  by  a  chain  of  natural 
causes  ?  It  plays  into  the  hands  of  badness  because  it 
provides  no  post-mortem  punishment  for  badness  and  no 
eternal  distinction  between  right  and  wrong.  And  it  leads 
to  pessimism  and  contempt  of  life  because  it  makes  of  a 
human  being  nothing  but  a  momentary  bubble  upon  an 
infinite  ocean.  To  all  of  which  we  can  only  say :  If  this 
be  logic,  it  is  at  least  not  history.  Some  or  all  of  these 
effects  may  have  followed  in  Asia  from  certain  forms  of 
pantheistic  thought,  but  they  have  never  been  observed  in 
those  who  have  been  influenced  by  Spinoza.  His  doctrine 
is  not  a  narcotic  poison  at  all,  but  at  once  a  tonic  and  a 
sedative.  Its  first  real  effect  has  never  been  better  de- 
scribed than  in  the  words  of  Herder :  ;  The  consciousness 
of  living  under  high  and  beautiful  laws  must  destroy  ego- 


10  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OP  LIFE. 

tism  and  reconcile  man  with  his  fate.'*  This,  surely,  is 
much  for  any  philosophic  or  scientific  creed  to  be  able  to 
do  ;  for  egotism,  that  is,  narrow  selfishness  combined  with 
an  over-estimate  of  one's  own  importance,  is  the  "root  of 
nearly  all  that  morality  and  religion  have  to  dread.  Its 
second  effect  is  to  give  to  conduct  not  a  diminished  but  a 
greatly  increased  significance,  by  pressing  home  the 
thought  that  an  action  once  dropped  into  the  shoreless 
ocean  goes  out  in  widening  wave-rings  to  the  end  of  time. 
Instead  of  '  Thou  God  seest  me,'  Spinoza  puts  the  thought : 
The  thing  thou  doest  is  henceforth  a  part  of  the  world's 
fate  forever  and  forever.  To  a  serious  person  this  is  the 
most  solemn  motive  for  right  conduct  that  can  possibly 
be  imagined.  A  ground  of  earnestness  being  thus  provided, 
the  next  question  naturally  is :  What  is  the  ultimate  object 
to  be  attained?  Spinoza  makes  the  great  end  of  life  to  be 
that  personal  happiness  which  comes  from  the  knowledge 
and  the  love  of  God.  Upon  his  theory,  then,  right  living 
presupposes,  first,  a  feeling  for  the  solemnity  of  life ;  this 
feeling  may  be  called,  with  reference  to  the  words  of  Goe- 
the below,  sympathy  with  the  World-soul.  Secondly  there 
is  to  be  a  steady  desire  to  know  more  and  more  of  God 
(struggle  with  the  World-mind;  for  'God'  is  here,  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind,  only  a  name  for  all  that  is).  From 
this  knowledge,  Spinoza  teaches,  will  come  love  and  acqui- 
escence and  these  will  beget  happiness.  Such,  in  naked 
outline,  is  the  ethical  ideal  that  underlies  that  wonderful 
stanza  from  Eins  und  Alles,  perhaps  the  most  pregnant 
half-dozen  lines  to  be  found  in  the  whole  range  of  Goethe's 

poetry : 

Soul  of  the  World,  come  and  invest  U8  ; 

Then  with  the  World-mind's  self  to  test  us, 

*  Herder's  Qesprfahe  fiber  Qott.     See  Julian  Schmidt's  edition  of  the 
Ideen  zur  Oeschichte  der  Menachheit.    Vol.  I,  p.  LXXXII. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  11 

Becomes  our  being's  noble  call ; 
Good  Spirits  lead,  our  way  attending, 
High  masters,  soothing  and  befriending, 

To  Him  that  made  and  makes  the  All.* 

What,  now,  were  the  c  few  great  regulative  principles ' 
above  alluded  to  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  will  show 
us  how  Goethe,  building  upon  Spinoza's  foundations,  but 
throwing  away  Spinoza's  scholastic  rubbish  and  putting 
a  construction  of  his  own  upon  Spinoza's  prescriptions, 
worked  out  a  theory  of  life  which  forms  an  epoch  in  mod- 
ern thought.  * 

II.    SELF-AFFIRMATION. 

It  was  originally  a  proposition  in  physics,  which  Spi- 
noza, borrowing  from  Des  Cartes  and  enlarging  the  scope 
of  its  application,  made  the  basis  of  his  own  theory  of  the 
passions,  and  so,  in  some  sense,  of  his  entire  prescriptive 
philosophy.  The  proposition  is  :  '  Everything,  so  far  as  in 
it  lies,  endeavors  to  persist  in  its  own  being.'f  This  prin- 
ciple, that  persistence  in  suo  ease  is  a  universal  law  of 
things,  being  duly  established,  Spinoza  proceeds  to  apply 
it  in  the  domain  of  ethics  thus :  k  Since  reason  demands 
nothing  contrary  to  nature,  it  therefore  demands  that  every 
one  shall  love  himself,  seek  his  own  true  advantage,  desire 
all  that  leads  a  man  to  greater  perfection  and  generally,  so 
far  as  in  him  lies,  endeavor  to  persist  in  his  own  being. 
Then,  seeing  that  virtue  is  naught  else  than  acting  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  one's  own  nature,  and  seeing  that  no  one 

*  •  Weltseele  komm,  uns  zu  durchdringen  ! 
Dann  mit  clem  Weltgeist  selbst  zu  ringen, 

Wird  unsrer  KrSfte  Hochberuf. 
Theilnebjnend  ffthren  gute  Geister, 
Qelinde  leitend,  hOchste  Melster, 

Zu  Dem,  der  Alles  schafft  und  schuf.'—  Werke,  II,  228. 

t  Ethics,  Part  III,  prop.  6. 


12  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

endeavors  to  preserve  his  own  being  except  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  of  his  own  nature,  it  follows  that  the  foun- 
dation of  virtue  is  this  very  endeavor  to  persist  in  one's 
own  being.'*  The  author  of  the  Ethics  takes  pains  to  guard 
this  deduction  against  the  suspicions  of  those  who  might 
think  '  that  self-interest  is  the  beginning  of  wickedness 
but  not  of  goodness.'  He  explains  that  man's  perfection 
is  realizable  only  in  society  and  can  not  therefore  be  con- 
sidered apart  from  the  general  weal.  The  law  of  persist- 
ence in  one's  own  being  really  requires,  therefore,  the  doing 
of  those  things  which  make  for  the  good  of  one's  self  and 
one's  fellow-men.  To  enable  us  to  decide  what  things 
these  are,  the  help  of  reason  must  be  called  in.  Reason 
tells  us  that  to  the  attainment  of  the  end  in  question  a 
certain  part  of  one's  '  being '  needs  to  be  repressed  rather 
that c  persisted '  in.  But  still  the  foundation  of  virtue  on 
its  positive  or  active  side  is  the  affirmation  of  self. 

We  turn  now  to  Goethe. 

The  present  Century  is  marked  by  the  emergence  of  a 
new  ethical  ideal  which,  under  the  name  of  Culture,  has 
made  both  friends  and  enemies.  But  whatever  view  be 
taken  of  this  ideal,  Goethe  is  usually  made  to  stand  sponsor 
for  it.  He  is  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the  cult  and,  like 
many  real  founders  of  a  cult,  he  has  been  overlaid  with 
mythology. 

There  is  in  literature,  especially  in  English  and  Amer- 
ican literature  of  the  not  too  recent  past,  a  mythological 
Goethe,  who  has  been  the  target  of  many  a  shot  in  prose 
and  verse.  This  myth  is  a  creature  without  a  heart,  inca- 
pable of  self-sacrifice  and  deaf  to  the  finer  issues  of  mo- 
rality. The  only  thing  that  he  cares  for  is  himself.  His 
motto,  so  to  speak,  is :  Art  for  art's  sake  and  Goethe  its 

*  Ethic*,  Part  IV,  prop.  18,  Scholium. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  13 

prophet.  He  is  a  sort  of  ^Esthetic  Mogul  bent  solely  upon 
achieving  his  own  pleasure  and  exhibiting  his  own  great- 
ness. Very  different  from  all  this  is  the  real  Goethe  as 
disclosed  in  the  facts  of  his  life,  and  yet  it  is  not  hard  to 
find  in  the  real  Goethe  something  which,  with  a  little  mis- 
construing and  a  good  deal  of  ignoring,  can  be  worked  over 
into  the  phantom  just  described.  What  was  this  some- 
thing? Probably  the  best  concise  answer  to  this  question 
is  to  be  found  in  a  sentence  of  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit,  a 
sentence  written  down  by  Goethe  as  he  stood  on  the 
threshold  of  old  age  and  looked  back  upon  his  early  ro- 
mance with  Friederike  Brion.  The  words,  which  contain 
the  rationale  not  only  of  his  conduct  toward  the  village 

maid,  but  also  of  his  entire  life,  are  these :  '  Man  may  seek  

his  higher  destiny  on  earth  or  in  heaven,  in  the  present  or 
in  the  future ;  yet  for  that  reason  he  remains  exposed  to 
constant  wavering  within  and  to  continual  disturbance 
from  without  until  he  once  for  all  makes  up  his  mind  to 
declare  that  that  is  right  which  is  suited  to  him  (cwas 
ihm  gemass  ist').* 

What  now  is  to  be  said  of  this  definition  ?  The  first 
thought  of  most  readers  probably  is  to  repudiate  it  with 
indignation  as  the  very  climax  of  moral  perversity.  On  the 
face  of  it  it  seems  to  justify  all  that  has  been  said  about  its 
author's  lack  of  feeling  for  the  higher  aspects  of  righteous- 
ness and  morality.  To  say  that  the  Right  is  the  Agreeable,  t 
sounds  very  like  a  vulgar  falsehood.  But  he  who  goes  in 
search  of  Goethe, '  the  clearest,  largest  and  most  helpful 
thinker  of  modern  times,'!  will  not  find  him  in  the  region 
of  vulgar  falsehoods.  Then,  too,  the  definition  in  question  — 
is  pronounced  by  so  good  an  authority  as  Rudolf  Virchow 

*  Werke,  XXII,  18. 

t  Matthew  Arnold,  in  the  essay  cited  above. 


16  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

is  a  passion  ceases  to  be  such  when  we  form  a  clear  and 
distinct  idea  of  it  (in  modern  phrase,  when  we  think  we 
understand  it).  The  first  step  toward  freedom  is,  then,  to 
learn  to  understand  one's  own  nature  as  a  part  of  the 
Eternal  Order  which  is  God ;  for  passion  is  subdued  the 
moment  we  think  of  that  which  excites  it  as  inevitable. 
Such  contemplation  of  the  ordered  universe  combined 
with  a  religious  feeling  of  calmness  and  acquiescence  is 
what  Spinoza  terms  the  '  love,  of  God,'  and  the  love  of 
God  is  in  his  theory  the  psychical  state  toward  which 
every  effort  should  tend.  It  is  at  once  the  supreme  virtue 
and  the  supreme  happiness. 

It  was  the  part  of  the  Ethics  just  outlined  which  af- 
fected the  mind  of  Goethe  most  deeply  and  from  which, 
as  he  tells  us,  he  drew  a  feeling  of  composure  and  an  en- 
thusiasm for  unselfishness.  That  which  impressed  him 
most'and  made  the  reading  of  the  Ethics  an  epoch  in  his 
life  was  precisely  the  thought  that  only  through  repression 
of  self  is  the  true  perfection  of  self  attainable.  It  is  along 
the  line  of  this  thought,  the  value  of  conscious  self- discip- 
line, that  much  of  Goethe's  significance  as  a  critic  of  life 
is  to  be  found.  The  subject  falls  under  two  heads. 

1.  Self-control. — The  theme  of  Goethe  in  his  earliest 
works  is(always  in  some  form  or  other,  the  power  of  pas- 
sion ;  usually  itis  the  power  of  passion  engaged  in  disas- 
trous revolt  against  the  bad  or  the  prosaic  facts  of  life. 
His  tragic  pathos  is  the  ending  of  this  revolt  in  despair  or 
death.(jlis  heroes  rave  and  rant  and  weep  and  are  swayed 
by  feeling  as  a  reed  is  shaken  by  the  wind.  Passion  is 
their  tyrant,  their  fate ;  it  drives  them  to  ecstasy  or  to 
destruction  and  they  appear  to  have  no  resource  but  to  go 
as  they  are  impelled.  Werther  shoots  himself  because  the 
world  is  his  enemy  and  never  dreams  that  his  enemy  is 
himself.  He  and  his  kind  scarcely  raise  the  question  of 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  17 

ruling  their  own  spirits  because  emotional  susceptibility 
and  emotional  extravagance  are  their  badge  of  distinc- 
tion, their  noblesse.    For  them  the  voice  of  the  heart  is 
alone  divine  and  the  counsels  of  reason  and  prudence  are 
vulgar,   r  Everywhere  in  this  literature  of  '  Storm   and 
Stress '  there  is  an  assumption,  tacit  or  explicit,  that  feel- 
ing is  the  sacred  and  admirable  thing  in  human  nature, 
and  that  reason  with  its  suggestions  o£  moderation  and 
self-control  inhabits  a  lower  and  meaner  level.     Running 
through  the  early  works  of  Goethe  will   be  found  this 
dualism :   passion  set  over  against  worldly  wisdom  in  such 
a  way  that  the  former  is  obviously  meant  for  sympathy 
and  the  latter  for  blame  or  contempt.  VNAnd  there  is  no 
doubt  where  the  sympathies  of  the  author  lay  in  this  per- 
petually recurring  conflict.    The  young  celebrity  who  ar- 
rived at  Weimar  in  November,  1775,  was  himself  a  man 
of  feeling  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term.    His  letters  of 
this  period  often  suggest  an  emotional  nature  set  on  a 
thousand  sensitive  springs.     For  a  time  he  continues  in 
the  old  way — is  enthusiastic,  excitable,  reckless.  Then  sud- 
denly a  change  has  begun.    Hard  work,  the  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility, the  study  of  nature,  his  friendship  for  Char- 
lotte von  Stein  and  not  least  of  all  the  Ethics  of  Spinoza, 
combine  to  effect  a  radical  transformation  of  his  character. 
Upon  his  return  from  a  Swiss  tour  in  178u  Wieland  noticed 
that  he  was  a  changed  man  and  observed  in  him  a  certain 
<ru)<ppoffuvr)  which  produced  a  quieting  effect  upon  those  that 
saw  him.    From  thi's  time  the  poetry  of  Goethe  begins  to 
reveal  a  new  note,  the  note  of  calmness,  and  to  be  charged 
with  a  new '  message,'  viz  :  thej  necessity  and  the  beauty  of 
self-control.      This    message  'appears  in  the   unfinished 
Geheimnisse,  written  in  1784^-5,  one  notable   stanza  of 
which  is : 

For  every  power  tends  forward  to  the  distance, 

2 


18  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

To  live  and  to  be  working  here  and  there ; 
And  thereunto  its  obstinate  resistance 
The  Stream  of  Time  opposeth  everywhere. 
Amid  this  stormy,  difficult  existence 
The  spirit  hears  the  oracles  declare  : 
That  thrall  the  universal  tyrant  shapeth 
He  that  subdues  himself  alone  escapeth  ! 

The  Iphigenie  and  the  Tasso  are  the  first-fruits  of  this 
new  philosophy.^  Goethe  finished  a  first  draft  of  the  form- 
er in  1779  and  began  the  latter  shortly  afterward.  Both 
plays  occupied  him  while  in  Italy,  1786-87,  the  one  being 
given  its  final  form  there,  the  other  being  completed  after 
his  return  to  Weimar  in  1788.  These  plays  are  thus  sepa- 
rated by  only  a  few  years  from  Wertker  and  Clamgo  but 
they  read  like  the  work  of  another  man.  These  smooth 
and  tranquil  pentameters,  this  delicate  phrasing,  this  sin- 
gular interest  in  decorum, — what  have  these  things  in  com- 
mon with  the  wild  and  stormy  language  of  the  earlier  days  ? 
The  transition  here  referred  to  has  sometimes  been  con- 
strued as  primarily  a  change  of  artistic  creed  due  to  the 
influence  of  Italy  and  of  Greek  art.  But  these  influences, 
as  the  above  dates  show,  could  at  the  most  only  have  per- 
fected a  process  that  had  already  been  some  time  going  on. 
And  then,  to  say  that  the  Iphigenie  is  a  Greek  play  in 
German  is  at  any  rate  one  of  the  most  superficial  things 
that  can  be  said  of  it.  The  work  is  not  primarily  an  aes- 
thetic experiment  of  any  kind,  but  is  in  its  inmost  essence 


*  -  Denn  alle  Kraft  dringt  vorwarts  in  die  Weite, 
Zu  leben  und  zu  wirken  hier  und  dort ; 
Dagegen  engt  und  heramt  von  jeder  Seite 
Der  Strom  der  Welt  und  reisst  uns  rait  sich  fort. 
In  diesem  innern  Sturm  und  aussern  Streite 
Vernimmt  der  Geist  ein  schwer-verstanden  Wort: 
Von  der  Gewalt  die  alle  Wesen  bindet, 
Befreitder  Mensch  sich,  der  sich  tlberwlndet.' 

-Tf'erfce-,1, 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  19 

biographical.  Every  scene  betokens,  it  is  tru%-  a  new 
poetic  art,  but  it  is  an  art-that ---has-been  born  of  a  radical 
change  of  heart  in  the  artist.  Iphigenie  is  herself  an  apos- 
tle of '  sweet  reasonableness'  and  the  catastrophe  of  the 
piece  is  only  that  King  Thoas,  besieged  by  love,  pride, 
anger  and  self-interest  yields  to  the  gentle  eloquence  of 
the  priestess  whom  he  wishes  for  a  wife,  and  in  magnifi- 
cent triumph  over  himself,  speaks  the  word  'farewell.' 
No  wonder  the  Weimar  public  did  not  know  what  to  make 
of  the  Iphigenie.  They  were  familiar  enough  with  the 
dramatic  pathos  which  lies  in  a  battle  to  the  death  with 
fate  or  tyranny  or  a  leader  of  armies.  They  would  have 
understood  a  fifth  act  which  let  the  curtain  fall  upon  a 
stage  filled  with  corpses.  But  they  had  no  understanding 
such  as  Goethe  had  come  to  have,  of  the  pathos  which  lies 
in  that  unseen,  noiseless  battle  the  winning  of  which  is 
said  to  be  more  than  the  taking  of  a  city. 

The  drama  of  Tasso  turns  upon  the  cure  of  a  morbid 
nature  whose  enemy  is  himself.  Tasso  is,  like  Werther,  a 
man  with  a  high-strung  emotional  temperament  who  sees 
everything  through  a  distorting  medium. L  The  play  gives 
the  same  fundamental  situation  as  the  .earlier  novel,  viz: 
a  man  of  feeling  at  loggerheads  with  the  world  about  him. 
But  whereas  Werther  has  it  all  his  own  way  and  goes  to 
destruction,  an  object  of  pity  to  the  end,  Tasso  is  set  over 
against  the  admirable  foils  of  Antonio  and  the  Duke,  and 
is  saved ;  an  object  of  compassion  at  first  and  at  last  of  ad- 
miration. •  In  Goetz  and  Clavigo  the  man  of  prudence  and 
worldly  wisdom  is  a  scoundrel ;  in  Tasso  he  is  master  of 
the  situation  and  is  meant  to  be  admired.  The  poet  of 
1774  has  his  eye  fixed  upon  the  awlul  power  of  passion ; 
the  poet  of  1788  is  thinking  of  the  perfection  of  character 
through  self-control. 

How  deeply  this  philosophy  sank  into  the  mind  of 


20  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OP  LIFE. 

Goethe  $iardly  needs  to  be  told.    Composure  is  a  Goethean 

specialty}  ^His  life  illustrates  it,  his  writings  plead  its 

cause.',   'Whatsoever  frees  our  minds  without  giving  us 

control  over  ourselves,  is  injurious;  '^  in  this  well-known 

saying  of  his  one  can  read  much  of  the  momentous  differ- 

^     ence  between  Goethe  and  Voltaire. — c  Goethe  the  all  too 

calm,'  sings  the  Swedish  poet  Tegner,  and  jnany  others 

*   have  said  the  same  thing.     Well,  at  any  rate  here  was  no 

cold  f»fH*  but  a  warm  one  who,  with  earnest  mind  chose 

what  he  took  to  be  the  part  of  wisdom.    And  having  chosen 

-he  kept  his  course  "at  the  risk- of  being  mytliologized  as 

n  unsympathetic  and  statuesque. 

2.  Renunciation  and  Resignation.  Early  in  the 
history  of  the  Christian  church,  holiness,  i.  e.  righteousness 
in  its  highest  phase,  came  to  be  associated  in  thought  with 
asceticism.  Christians  had  been  commanded  to  repent  of 
their  sins  and  to  renounce  the  world ;  and  so  the  doing  of 
penance  involving  more  or  less  of  self-torture  was  accepted 
as  the  divinely  prescribed  way  to  the  topmost  heights  of 
Christian  character.  This  doctrine  of  renunciation  of  the 
world,  though  it  has  in  the  process  of  the  centuries  sur- 
vived some  startling  vicissitudes  of  interpretation,  is  still 
in  theory  a  corner-stone  of  Christian  ethics.  And  natur- 
ally ;  since  the  modern  Christian,  though  he  may  no  longer 
hold  that  the  world  is  entirely  bad,  yet  does  hold  that  its 
chief  goodness  consists  in  the  opportunity  it  offers  to  pre- 
pare for  another  world  that  is  vastly  better.  But  how 
must  the  maxim  of  renunciation  be  looked  upon  by  a  man 
**  like  Goethe  &)  HenSltdj  it  is  true,  to  a  belief  that  death  is 
not  the  end  of  life,  ^Wft  lie^never  make$  a»y  use  of  this  be- 

*'Alles,  was  unsern  Geist  befreit,  ohne  uns  die  Herrschaft  fiber  uns 
selbst  zu  geben,  1st  verderblich.'—  Werke,  XIX,  20. 

Compare  also:  '  Welche  Regierung  die  beste  sel?  Diejenlge,  die  uns 
lehrt,  una  selbst  zu  regieren.'—  Werke,  XIX,  71. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  21  * 

&*-\ 

lief  in  his  ethical  philosophy.  He  held  also  that  life, in 
the  world  that  now  is,  is  a  irood  thing  which  ought  to  be 
enjoyed.  v  In  fact  he  makes  enjoyment  (of  a  certain  kind) 
the  great  end  of  life.  l  Wherefore,'  he  says,  c  wherefore 
this  expenditure  of  suns  and  planets  and  moons,  of  stars 
and  milky  ways,  of  comets  and  nebulae,  of  worlds  made 
and  making,  if  a  fortunate  man  is  not  at  last  to  enjoy  his 
existence  ?  '*<-  To  a  man  with  such  a  creed  must  not  renun- 
ciation in  any  form  seem  at  least  a  mistake  and  all  kinds 
of  self- torturing  morality  a  mere  monstrous  fanaticism? 
It  might  seem  soy  and  yet  renunciation  is  again  a  Goethean 
specialty.  I  In  a  letter  of  1820  he  tells  how  he  constantly 
practices  it  and  feels  himself  '.strengthened'  in  conse- 
quence. Wilhelm  Meister^s  Lehrjahre  has  more  or  less  to 
do  with  the  subject,  and  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wander jahre 
oder  Die  Entsagenden  is  named  after  it.  It  is  the  main 
theme  of  Die  Wahlvervandsphaften  and  a  minor  theme  of 
Die  Natttrliche  Toclitcr.  It  is  interwoven  with  the  con- 
clusion of  j^atttfand  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit  has  a  short 
essay  upon  it.  it  has  been  sometimes  thought  that  all 
this  interest  in  renunciation  is,  from  an  ethical  point  of 
view,  somewhat  factitious  and  means  nothing  more 
than  an  artist's  fondness  for  a  particular  kind  of  'etude ; 
for  the  real  conviction  of  Goethe,  as  nobody  will  doubt 
who  knows  him,  was  that  expressed  in  the  words :  ;  Impa- 
tience is  of  no  good,  of  still  less  is  remorse ;  the  one  in- 
creases the  old  guilt  the  other  creates  new.'  \  But  making 
all  due  allowance  for  the  poet's  love  of  '  studies '  in  un- 
worldliness  and  in  penitential  renunciation,  it  is  still  to  be 

*  Werke,  XXVIII,  199. 

f  Nichts  taust  Ungeduld, 
Noch  weniger  Reue  ; 
Jene  vermehrtdie  Schuld, 
Diese  schafFt  neue.'—  Werke,  II,  339. 


22  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

insisted  that  that  large  seriousness  which  was  a  part  of  his 
—  nature  shows  itself  here  alsoJ  Asceticism  and  self-morti- 
lication  are  no  part  of  his  creed  )aut  they  are  great  facts  in 
life  and  he  takes  note  of  them.  He  drops  admonitions 
enough,  too,  that  pleasure  is  dangerous  and  that  constant 
submission  to  self-imposed  restraints  is  of  the  essence  of 
high  character.  In  only  one  other  place  does  Faust  rise  to 
such  height  as  where  at  the  end  of  an  impassioned  de- 
scription of  an  ideal  ruler  he  says  to  Mephistopheles  : 
^  '  Enjoyment  makes  vulgar.'  * 

But  there  is  another  aspect  of  the  doctrine  of  renun- 
ciation which  is,  for  the  understanding  of  Goethe,  the 
really  important  one.  A  part  of  the  above-mentioned 
passage  from  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit  is  as  follows: 

4  Our  physical  as  well  as  our  social  life,our  manners  and 
customs,  our  worldly  wisdom,  philosophy  and  religion, 
even  many  casual  occurrences  call  upon  us  to  renounce.  .  .  . 
For  the  performance  of  this  hard  task,  however,  Nature 
has  endowed  man  with  abundant  strength,  hardihood  and 
tenacity.  Especially  is  he  aided  by  that  buoyancy  of  mind 
which  is  given  him  in  inexhaustible  supplies.  By  this 
means  he  is  able  each  moment  to  give  up  a  particular 
thing  if  he  can  only  the  next  moment  reach  out  after  some- 
thing new;  and  thus  unconsciously  we  keep  restoring  our 
whole  life.  We  put  one  passion  in  place  of  another;  em- 
ployments, dilettantisms,  amusements,  hobbies — we  try 
them  all  through  to  the  end  only  to  cry  out  at  last  that  all 
is  vanity.  No  one  is  horrified  at  this  false,  this  blasphem- 
ous saying;  indeed  it  is  thought  to  be  wise  and  irrefutable. 
But  there  are  few  persons  who,  anticipating  such  intoler- 
able feelings,  in  order  to  avoid  all  partial  resignations,  re- 
sign themselves  universally  once  for  all.  Such  persons 

*  '  Geniessen  raacht  gemein.'—  Werke,  XIII,  182. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE.  23 

convince  themselves  with  regard  to  the  eternal,  necessary, 
law-governed  order  of  things  and  seek  to  acquire  ideas 
which  are  indestructible  and  which  are  only  confirmed  by 
contemplation  of  that  which  is  transient.' 

Renunciation  is  here  not  an  abandonment  of  pleasure,  — • 
nor  any  form  of  self-castigation,  but  a  purely  intellectual 
act.  It  is  the  acquirement  and  maintenance  of  a  certain 
habit  of  mind  and  its  use  is  to  counteract  the  influences 
that  make  for  pessimism. (  One  of  the  gravest  of  ethical 
needs  is  a  source  of  courage,  or,  what  is  much  the  same,  an 
antidote  for  indifference,  despair  and  cynicism.  The  anti- 
dote which  Goethe  prescribes  is  compound.  The  second 
part  of  it  consists  in  fixing  the  mind  as  much  as  possible 

-  upon'great  ideas  which  are  not  liable  to  decay  and  death. 

'^This  subject  naturally  requires  further  consideration  by  it- 
self. The  first  part  of  the  antidote  consists  in  renunciation- 
once-for  all  or  resignation.  We  can  spike  the  guns  of  the 
croaking  army  from  the  Preacher  down  by  simply  admit- 
ting in  advance  all  they  can  say  as  to  the  vanity  of  the 
world's  life,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  purely  selfish  pursuit  of 
property,  distinction  or  pleasure.  These  things  are  vanity 
not  in  the  sense  that  they  are  contemptible  but  in  the 
sense  that  the  gratification  they  bring  is  imperfect  and 
transitory.  They  do  not  afford  the  kind  of  peace  which 
the  nature  of  man  forever  craves,  and  when  one  has  once  for 
all  admitted  this  fact  he  is  not  to  be  convulsed  by  each 
new  illustration  of  it. 

There  are  different  kinds  of  resignation.  It  may  be 
languid  and  apathetic ;  it  may,  like  the  sky  and  the  rocks 
in  Mr.  Arnold's  poem 

4  Seem  to  bear  rather  than  rejoice.' 

Again  one  may  be  resigned  to  the  ills  of  life  because 
he  holds  that  these  ills  are  wisely  ordained  as  a  medium 


24  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

wherein  to  prepare  for  another  life  in  which  they  shall  not 
appear.    Butlthe  resignation  commended  by  Goethe  i«  like 
— •  neither  of  tEese.     If  is  energetic  and  courageous,  intent 
solely  upon  performance  and  full  of  faith  that  life  is  good  < 
Veven  without  reference  to  issues  that  are  beyond  the  grave. 
"  This  is  the  creed  at  which  Faust  arrives  in  the  fullness  of 
his  years  and  the  ringing  words  in  which  he  speaks  his 
mind  are  in  themselves  a  complete  text  book  of  modern 
humanism : 

The  circle  of  the  earth  is  known  to  me, 
What's  on  the  other  side  we  cannot  see. 
Fool  he  who  thither  turns  his  blinking  eyes, 
And  dreams  of  beings  like  him  in  the  skies ! 
Let  him  stand  fast  and  look  around  him  here! 
To  him  that  does  his  work  Earth's  riddle's  clear. 
Why  need  he  fancy  other  worlds  of  bliss? 
What  he  can  seize  and  hold  is  his  in  this. 
Thus  let  him  travel  his  allotted  day, 
If  ghosts  beset  him  let  him  go  his  way; 
And  be  he  while  both  joy  and  pain  betide, 
Each  moment  of  his  life  unsatisfied!* 

IV.    SELF-SURRENDER 

It  is  not  easy  to  describe  in  brief  compass  that  part  of 
life  which  for  Goethe  is  not  vanity  and  which  he  thinks  it 
4  false  and  blasphemous '  to  call  vanity.  Perhaps  the  best 

*'  Der  Erdenkreis  1st  mlr  genug  bekannt, 
Nach  drftben  ist  die  Aussicht  uns  verrant; 
Thor,  wer  dorthin  die  Augen  blinzend  richtet, 
Slch  liber  Wolken  Seinesgleichen  dichtet! 
Er  stehe  fest  und  sehe  hier  sich  um ; 
Dem  Ttichtigen  ist  dtese  Welt  nicht  stumra. 
Was  branch t  er  in  die  Ewigkeit  zu  sch weifen  ! 
Was  er  erkennt,  Iftsst  sich  ergreifen. 
Er  wandle  so  den  Erdentag  entlang, 
Wenn  (leister  spuken,  geh'  er  seinen  Oang ; 
Im  Weiterschreiten  flndTer  Qual  und  Glflck, 
Er,  unbefriedigt  Jeden  Augenblick  ! '—  Werke,  XIII,  220. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OP  LIFE.  25 

formula  will  be :  The  good  work  one  is  able  to  do  in  behalf 
of  any  or  all  of  the  great  ideas  for  the  sake  of  which,  so 
far  as  can  be  seen,  mankind  exists.  And  here  again  there 
is  much  in  common  between  the  Jew  philosopher  and  the 
humanistic  poet.  Says  Spinoza  in  describing  the  line  of 
observation  and  reflection  which  had  led  him  to  his  own 
theory  of  life : 

'  I  noticed  moreover  that  happiness  and  unhappiness 
depend  on  the  character  of  the  object  to  which  we  attach 
our  affections.  For  about  that  which  is  not  loved  there 
is  never  any  contention ;  there  is  no  sorrow  if  it  die,  no 
envy  if  it  be  possessed  by  another,  no  fear,  no  hate,  no  dis- 
turbance of  the  mind  whatever ;  all  of  which  things  happen 
if  one  loves  that  which  can  perish.  But  love  for  a  thing 
infinite  and  eternal  feeds  the  mind  with  pure  joy  which  is 
free  from  all  sorrow ;  a  thing  which  is  greatly  to  be  desired 
and  sought  for  with  all  one's  powers.  Sed  amor  erga  rem 
aeternam  et  infinitam  sola  laetitia  pascit  animum  ipsaque 
est  omnis  tristitiae  expers  :  quod  valde  est  desiderandum 
totisque  viribus  quaerendum."1* 

It  is  here  implied  distinctly  enough  that  the  supreme 
end  of  life  is  happiness,  but  it  is  also  taught  that  in  order 
to  the  attainment  of  any  happiness  that  is  without  draw- 
backs, an  object  of  affection  is  needed  which  is  not  subject 
to  the  vicissitudes  of  time  and  chance,  lhat  is  to  say, 
while  the  root^of  right  conduct  lies  in  the  affirmation  of 
self,  its  fruitage,  or  the  highest  realization  of  self-interest, 
lies  in  a  self-surrendering  devotion  to  an  object  felt  to  be 
infinitely  great  and  enduring.  Or  finally,  in  the  words  of 
the  greatest  of  all  adepts  in  this  kind  of  knowledge : 
4  Whosoever  will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  but  whosoever 
will  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  shall  save  it.' 

*  De  Intellectus  Emendatione  Tractates  (3d  paragraph.) 


26  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OP  LIFE. 

All  this  philosophy  which  has  to  do  with  man's  need 
of  a  religion,  his  need,  that  is,  of  an  infinite  and  eternal 
object  of  affection,  Goethe  could,  and  did  accept  with  all 
his  heart.  But  Goethe  was  in  two  important  particulars 
what  Spinoza  was  not:  he  was  an  heir  of  Hellas  and  a 
contemporary  of  the  Revolution.  It  is  not  strange  there- 
fore that  he  should  put  Man  in  the  place  of  Spinoza's '  God ' 
as  the  supreme  object  of  devotion.  And  this  is  after  all  a 
natural  extension  of  Spinoza's  doctrine.  For  with  Spinoza 
God  is  Nature.  But  Nature's  last  and  highest  thought  is 
Man ;  at  least  we  are  able  to  discover  no  goal  of  Nature's 
operations  which  is  ulterior  to  Man  and  his  perfection.  It 
is  then  reasonable  to  regard  as  the  highest  thing  in  Nature 
those  great  dominating  instincts  or  ideas  through  which  the 
destiny  of  men,  whatever  it  be,  is  working  itself  out.  Of 
these  ideas  three  are  preeminent — the  idea  of  Right,  the 
idea  of  Truth,  and  the  idea  of  Beauty.  Others  as  the  idea 
of  Power  and  of  Love,  may  deserve  mention,  but  the  three 
first-named  have  certainly  been  most  efficient  in  bringing 
man  thus  far  from  the  state  of  animalism,  and  must  be 
mainly  relied  upon  to  take  him  the  rest  of  the  way  to  his 
unknown  goal.  These  great  ideas  which  make  for  the 
welfare  of  humanity  are  in  reality  the  highest  objects  of 
thought  we  know  anything  about.  The  most  refined  theism 
combines  them  in  a  single  Person  and  calls  them  by  the 
name  of  God.  Work  done  for  these  is  not  vanity  because 
it  will  continue  accomplishing  its  purpose  through  innu- 
merable ages.  There  is  then,  no  irreverence  and  no  under- 
,  valuing  of  religion  in  Goethe's  familiar  saying:  'He  that 
has  Art  and  Science  has  also  Religion/*  It  means  that 
Beauty,  Truth  and  Righteousness  stand  coordinated  as  the 
worthiest  possible  objects  of  love.  Each  fulfills  the  great 

*  Werke,  III,  274. 


GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OP  LIFE.  27 

requirement  of  a  religion  ;  each  furnishes  a  res  aeterna  et 
infinite)  devotion  to  which  may  be  expected  to  afford  a 
better  happiness  than  is  to  be  had  in  the  range  of  secular- 
ity  and  selfishness. 

But  is  the  great  prize  to  be  won  only  on  the  heights  of 
artistic  creation  and  of  scientific  discovery?  Does  the 
world  exist  only  for  the  refined  and  educated  few  ?  A  man 
with  such  views  could  hardly  be  called  a  very  '  helpful ' 
thinker.  The  ethical  creed  of  Goethe  culminates  in  a  doc- 
trine which  is  large  enough  for  the  sage  and  easy  enough 
for  the  sage's  valet ;  which  lays  on  them  both  the  same 
command  and  insures  to  each  his  own  reward.  The  doc-  -— 
trine  is  that  happiness  of  the  best  kind  comes  only  when 
self  is  lost  sight  of  in  the  sense  of  usefulness.  To  this 
question,  How  to  find  peace  ?  Goethe  addresses  the  great 
work  of  his  life.  The  theme  of  Faust  is  the  redemption  <  -* 
of  a  self-centered  and  self  tormenting  pessimist  through 
enlarged  experience  of  life  culminating  at  the  last  in  self- 
forgetful  activity. 

The  earlier  Faust  is,  like  Werther  and  Tasso,  a  morbid 
nature.    His  malady  is  that  which  is  described  by  Sainte- 

Beuve  as  '  un  vague  degodt  du  monde  et  de  la  vie  / 

une  surexcitation  maladive  de  Vdgoisme  et  de  V  orgueil."* 
The  one  thing  that  he  desires  is  happiness  and  he  has  be- 
come a  sentient  misery.  In  the  bitterness  of  his  contempt 
for  life  he  wagers  his  soul  with  Mephistopheles  that  exist- 
ence has  not  for  him  the  possibility  of  one  single  happy 
moment  when  he  shall  be  ready  '  to  stretch  himself  com- 
placently upon  a  bed  of  ease,)'  :J4reir'he  sets  out  through 
the  c  little  world  and  the  great '  in  search  of  this  one  happy 
moment.  One  after  the  other  he  experiments  witli  riot, 
love,  politics,  gestJrefcic  sensualism,  military  leadership  and 
the  getting  of  riches.  He  meets  with  various  pleasures  aft 
of  which  presently  end  in  sorrow  or  disappointment.  At 


28  GOETHE  AND  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE. 

last^in  his  old  age^he  forms  and  executes  the  great  plan  of 
redeeming  to  human  uses  a  large  tract  of  the  ocean's  bed. 
Full  of  riches  and  honor,  but  still  thinking  of  himself,  he 
'is  irritated  by  a  trifling  obstacle  in  his  path,  In  trying  to 
get  rid  of  this  he  commits  a  crime  which  he  expiates  with 
blindness.  Then  with  death  at  his  door  he  summons  up 
all  his  energy  to  direct  the  draining  of  a  pestilential  marsh 
on  his  domain.  In  his  eagerness  to  complete  the  ..great 
work  before  death  shall  interrupt  him  he  forgets  himSelf 
and  lets  his  imagination  range  forward  to  the  coming  gen- 
erations that  are  to  enjoy  the  results  of  his  labor;  -«mdan 
the  anticipation  of  their  happiness  the  supreme  moment 
has  arrived  for  himself.  He  has  both  won  and  lost  his 
wager.  There  has  been  no  lying  down  upon  a  bed  of  ease, 
but  the  moment  .of  jmre  joy,  sola  laetitia  expers  omnis 
tristitiae,  fcas  falleiTto  his  lot.  It  came  the  moment  he 
ceased  to  look  for  it  and  fixed  his  thoughts  upon  the  ben- 
efit others  were  to  get  from  the  good  work  he  had  done. 


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